Even some of the public art – including giant sculptures of books often depicts horse racing.

A number of artistic horse sculptures are scattered around town.

A downtown sculpture area is called Thoroughbred Park – depicting the finish line in great detail.

The best ‘ghost sign’ in town is for Horse Racing Oats.

But there is more to Lexington that just horses and bourbon – there is the University of Kentucky, and their stunning library.

For a city this far off the east coast there are a number of early 1800 or older buildings and homes.

A former courthouse is now the main visitor center – as well as other civic offices.

The area has been growing, and there is evidence of new investments downtown with government buildings and plazas.

The main library is newer as well, and features this 5 story pendulum clock – reputed to be the largest in the world.

We visited Transylvnia University and an art fair that was occurring there. The college was the first institution of higher learning west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is named for the Transylvania Colony – a proposed 14th colony that never really came to be – but the university name stuck.

Our final stop was the arboretum shared by the University of Kentucky and the city of Lexington. On this spring day there were a number of groups using the setting for their backdrops – homecoming groups, weddings, engages, and others…

Our final stop was a memorial to 49 people who lost their lives in a commuter airline crash in 2006. They are represented by 49 birds in flight.

For a mid sized city Lexington has a lot to offer – a good place to spend a day or two.

The city of Lexington, Kentucky like many cities has some murals around town. Unlike anywhere we have ever seen, they seem to have them everywhere – and most are very well done.

In addition they aren’t all the traditional history based murals – rather many have artistic statements. Below is an extensive view of many of the murals – if you are interested in more details behind them I recommend checking out the two links below:

It is a six-hour drive from Nashville to Columbus, but I had a couple of stops planned. First up is the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This is the museum where eight classic corvettes fell through the floor because a 60-foot-long, 45-foot-wide, 30-foot-deep sinkhole opened up in February 2014. The museum recovered and rebuilt the museum to display six of the eight cars.

One Corvette was restored and five are shown in their state of wreckage. Another Corvette is being restored. The sinkhole area is now a tall cylindrical building as a tribute tower for all who have contributed to the creation and promotion of the Corvette and exhibiting the fallen corvettes at the spot of the sinkhole. The museum also presented a history of the corvette of its development, design, and engineering.

We were caught in a construction zone after Bowling Green on Interstate 65. This detour prevented us from seeing the Stonehenge of Kentucky in Munfordville, so we continued on to Lexington.

We reached Keeneland, a horse track, that was to host the Breeder’s Cup Race in 2015, a month or so after our visit. The grounds are perfectly manicured and this facility has grass and dirt racetracks. The stands were open so we explored all, taking the elevator to the top floor of the grandstand to see the full view of the surroundings. We drove around the grounds that encompassed acres of land and found the stables and then the library that has the largest collection of horse information in the country. We also saw statues of jockeys represented by their colors for the horse owners in the Breeder’s Cup.

Our plans were to take us to the Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky but we were ready to go home and continued driving until we made it to Columbus. We spent 24 days together on the road without a minute break from each other; most people would call this a true test of marriage and we aced it while having one of the best vacations of our lives.